Alleged victims of scam centres boarding a boat to cross the river on the Myanmar-Thai border to be met by Thai soldiers as they are repatriated from Kyauk Khet in Myanmar's Myawaddy township on Feb. 12, 2025. - AFP This article was published in thejakartapost.com with the title "". Click to read: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2025/04/23/two-more-trafficked-migrant-workers-die-in-cambodian-scam-centers.html. Download The Jakarta Post app for easier and faster news access: Android: http://bit.ly/tjp-android iOS: http://bit.ly/tjp-ios
JAKARTA: Two more Indonesian migrant workers, coerced into working in online scam centres in Cambodia, have died, amid an alarming surge in reports of Indonesians being lured and trapped into human trafficking schemes abroad.
The family of Rizal Sampurna, a 30-year-old migrant worker from Banyuwangi, East Java, received confirmation on Sunday (April 20) from both the Foreign Ministry and the Migrant Workers Protection Ministry that he had died.
The family had been desperately trying to locate Rizal after an unidentified individual visited their home earlier this month, providing them with unverified information about his reported death.
“The government has informed us that they received Rizal’s death certificate signed by Cambodian authorities.
The family is shocked and deeply saddened by the news,” said the family’s legal representative, Bagus Abu Bakar, in a statement on Monday, as quoted by Kompas.com. Bagus also confirmed that Rizal’s body is currently being stored in a morgue in Cambodia, and the Indonesian government will assist in repatriating his remains.
The exact cause of Rizal’s death remains unclear.
According to Migrant Workers Protection Minister Abdul Kadir Karding, Rizal left for Cambodia in October of last year with 20 others, without informing his family.
In January, he contacted his family and revealed that he had been working at an online scam centre in Cambodia.
Rizal was promised a salary of US$800 per month but only received $300. He told a close friend that he endured inhumane treatment, including being chained to his chair while working. His friend also reported that Rizal was threatened with being transferred to more dangerous scam centres in Myanmar or Vietnam if he failed to meet his targets.
Another migrant worker, 28-year-old Ihwan Sahab from Bekasi, West Java, was also recently killed in Cambodia after falling victim to human trafficking.
Ihwan, the primary breadwinner for his family, had been working in Cambodia since February of last year. He told his family that he had been transferred by his company in Indonesia to work in the country, but in reality, he was employed at an online scam centre.
On April 4th, Cambodian police discovered Ihwan unconscious on the side of the road. He was naked and had multiple injuries across his body, and was promptly rushed to a local hospital. When Ihwan regained consciousness, he contacted his family and told them that he had been beaten by his employers for two days straight for failing to meet targets.
"He said he was electrocuted and beaten by around 15 individuals. We saw that he had injuries all over his body, including to his head, feet and hands," Ihwan's younger brother, Subiyantoro, said recently, as reported by Tribunnews.com.
Ihwan succumbed to his injuries on April 14. The official cause of death was a ruptured blood vessel in his head, resulting from blunt force trauma.
Rizal and Ihwan’s deaths came just a month after that of Soleh Darmawan, a 24-year-old man from Bekasi, who was promised a job as a chef in Thailand but instead was trafficked to Cambodia and forced to work for an online gambling company.
Between 2020 and September last year, Jakarta repatriated more than 4,700 Indonesians entangled in online scam operations in Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, according to Foreign Ministry data.
Indonesia is one of the world’s largest providers of migrant workers, and hundreds of thousands of people from the country’s poorest regions head overseas every year in search of higher-paying work, often using unofficial channels.
The ministry’s data show that the majority of Indonesian migrant workers are employed in low-skilled jobs that have little to no legal protection, such as domestic workers, day labourers and plantation workers.
The Migrant Workers Protection Ministry is working to provide training and support so that workers can leave as skilled labourers, while also avoiding countries with a history of trafficking Indonesian workers. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
